Colonies 4.11 (by John Ellis)
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A scenario for Civilization II MGE (by Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds) set between 1630 and 1780 in Europe and North America. It requires Civilization II MGE (Ultimate Civ) edition, in order to handle the gigamap.

Designer's Notes
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Introduction and Credits:
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Colonies IV has been in development for a very long time (since June 2002 at least) and has been contributed to and playtested by many of my friends and colleagues in the Civilization "community". They must take much of the credit for what has been the most collaborative of my scenarios, but any errors, inaccuracies or just plain bad design is still down to me. My name is on the thing, after all!

Where possible, I have included in brackets peoples' identities on the CFC forums.

For contributions to the game mechanics, I would like to thank Chris (AoA), Henrik (Henrik), Javier (Yaroslav) and Steve (conmcb25).

For contributions to the graphics, I would particularly like to thank Arne (Arne) and Henrik for their active help, and also many other designers whose existing work I have borrowed or modified. Alex Mor, Morten Blabjerg and (St.Leo) are numbered amongst these.

In addition to those mentioned above, Heiko (Yop73), (Darius) and (DuckOfFlanders) have helped a lot with the - hopefully fun - playtesting, and essential - but no doubt less fun - feedback.

Finally, as special mention is due to my girlfriend Sue, without whose tolerance none of this would have been possible. Mind you, in order to get her full co-operation, I have had to agree to marry her! I hope you all appreciate the price I have paid! ;-)

The scenario is a spiritual descendant of my Colonies series, particularly Colonies III. My main intention when I started to develop it was just to make a "better" Colonies III on a gigamap. However, lots of things started to change and it's become quite a bit different. This is the account of what I did, and why.


The Period (1630-1780)
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Slightly earlier than Colonies III, I wanted to replicate the struggles in Europe, as this is what preoccupied the rulers of the time, much more than their fledgeling colonies. 


The Timescale (1 move = 6 months)
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With the huge map, any more compression of the timescale (eg 1 move = 1 year) would just have units moving too slowly. Also, I wanted there to be time for each technology level to "settle in" and be played with, before it was obsoleted. In Colonies III one often barely had time to start building a unit, before it became obsolete. Science too, takes 12-30 turns on average, not the 4-5 moves common to the later stages of Colonies III.

For MP games, especially PBEMs, I recommend the first 50-70 years only (100-140 turns) are played. That is the most interesting period, anyway! I might release a Colonies IV: Chapter Two, to enable players to start at 1700 and still have a hope of finishing the game.

The Map
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This map I am quite pleased with. It was developed from a diagonally-placed rectangle superimposed on a globe of the world. I therefore managed to exclude the empty wastes of Northern Canada and the jungles of Equatorial Africa (neither of which was really explored in this period), yet still fit in Europe and Central and South-Central America - where the action happens!

A lot of work went in to making it realistic, yet playable. However, there has been one compromise for game mechanics: there are no swamps in Europe. This means the Camargue, the polders of Holland, the Wash in East Anglia and the Bogs of Ireland are not really represented accurately. However, this was done to stop players shipping Slaves home and creating Sugar and Tobacco Planations near to home. 

I have extended the playable area of Europe eastwards, to encompass the battlefields of the 30 Years War and also to give countries like France some serious concerns on their eastern borders so they cannot concentrate exclusively on colonisation.

The competing Nations
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France, Spain, England and Holland were obvious. I chose Sweden as (apart from Portugal) they were the next most active colonizers. However, Portugal is too small to be viable, really, and their Empire was mainly 16th Century, and in Southern Africa and the East Indies anyway.

Sweden is also a major player in the 30 Years War. Hence the Hapsburgs, as a counter to them, and as the main land power to counterbalance France too.

The Natives
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Unlike Colonies III, there are no Native Civs. This is partly for playbalance (they are really too strong in Colonies III, although they ARE fun to play) and partly because I only had 7 Civs to play with. 

They work very much as I wanted them to, overall, but there were two compromises I had to make as the design process went on.

1) Despite taking huge pains to ensure each Native city produced units appropriate to its location, most of the cities (apart from the Irish ones and the Pirate camps of the Caribbean, strangely) refused to complete any new units. They either seemed "stuck" on the number of shields they first started with, or disbanded the units they produced once raised. Other designers have had similar problems it seems, and it appears to be a limitation of the Barbarian "Civ" built into the game. Therefore, I have had to use the events file to raise Native units in appropriate locations, at appropriate frequencies.

2) The Natives can't handle "stackable" terrain (ie one that has invisible fortresses in each square, like Bonaparte II). They just go into fortification mode as soon as they move outside a city. For that reason, my original intention to use stackable squares had to be abandoned, because active Natives are crucial to making the scenario work.

However, for the MP game, I think I will allow fortresses to be buildable (they are not in the SP game as this makes taking computer-held cities just way too easy), but visible. I might get rid of naval Natives and Pirates and make just all sea squares stackable - I haven't decided yet.

Events
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As mentioned above, I had to use a lot of the available 16k events space to raise Natives. Therefore, the file is somewhat low on "colour" and informational events. Also, the events that reward players for taking enemies' Carracks are limited to some nations and some victims only, to save space. And Merchantmen offer no such rewards, but by the time they appear money should be less tight anyway.

I haven't counted them, but I believe I have used the maximum number of events allowed by Civ II MGE, as well as the maximum size of events file. If a large amount of text is deleted to make rom for another event, even if the resultant file is well below 16k, the game crashes.

This scenario really pushes the limits!

Finally a word on the unit strengths. I had to make the later ships (Two Deckers etc) very much stronger in defence than attack. This just evens things up, and a one-to-one battle between evenly matched ships should be a 50-50 deal. Civ distorts things at sea in favour of the attacker, especially when the attack and defence values are high.

